Catching Up With Ryan Leestma—How Powerboat Passion Drove Adelaide Pointe – Speed on the Water
Until he started down the path to developing Adelaide Pointe, an upscale residential community in Muskegon, Mich., which will include the state’s first new marina in 30 years, Ryan Leestma of Leestma Management, LLC, was all about commercial real estate. The longtime performance-boat enthusiast, who currently owns an Outerlimits SV 29 as well as a 29-foot Axopar, is among the 10 top commercial landlords in Michigan with close to 1 million square feet of industrial space in his portfolio.
The man behind the first new marina in Michigan in 30 years, Ryan Leestma is a devoted high-performance powerboat lover.
But when he spied a 30-plus-acre parcel of land on the shores of Muskegon Lake for sale, the propellers in his head started spinning on what would be his first residential project. What his home-state lacked, Leestma believed, was a truly upscale waterfront community—such as those in Florida—that catered to powerboat owners. So three years ago, he purchased the land and set his mind to creating one.
The result is Adelaide Pointe, which officially opens this summer with 55 condominiums and 35 “mancaves,” a full-service marina with 165 wet-slips, extensive dry storage, office space and more.
Total price-tag for the project? A cool $85 million.
As reported yesterday on speedonthewater.com, Adelaide Pointe Marina will host West Michigan Offshore’s season-opener in 2024. And Leestma can’t wait for the event, now dubbed the Adelaide Pointe Powerboat Weekend, to happen as he revealed in a short interview.
An artist’s rendering of the complete first phase of Adelaide Pointe.
Adelaide Pointe is your first residential real estate venture. What inspired you to develop it?
(Laughs) Honestly, I just spent a year messing around and I got bored. I saw this incredible piece of waterfront property and I was just compelled to do it. The condos are going vertical right now—they are mass-timber condos, completely constructed of engineered wood rather than concrete and steel, from 1,450 to 3,200 square feet. And every single one of them has a waterfront view.
The dry storage facility at the marina is completely built as are the multi-use buildings with offices and a restaurant. It’s even going to have a boat dealership and a brewery.
I want this to be the most luxurious, planned residential powerboating community in the state of Michigan. We are doing everything “to the nines.” Everything, from our dry stack for boats up to 50 feet to our new fuel dock with four high-flow pumps and extended hoses, will be friendly to powerboaters.
Mancaves for lease are “a thing” right now in storage facilities. And yours are located in a new marina development.
They are. We took a couple of industrial warehouses and sliced them into 35 spaces from 1,200 to 4,500 square. Most of them are 90 feet deep, 24 feet wide and 18 feet tall. We created a dozen of them last year and they were sold out before we started. We are doing 20 more and they will be leased as soon as we get done building them.
An overview of the Adelaide Pointe layout.
When will the first phase of Adelaide Pointe be finished?
By summer. My wife, Dr. Emily Leestma, is already starting the soft opening of the Muskegon Brewing Company—she also owns the Bear Lake Tavern. She has PhD in neuro-science. She’s very well-known in her field.
Those are heady credentials for a micro-brewery owner.
(Laughs) Yeah, well, she also helped design the condos and most of the office space.
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